A demo: How littering goes unchecked even at Shimla SDA Complex

SHIMLA- If you wonder how seriously the administration of Shimla and its people take Swaccha Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign), here is a small scale demonstration. The area is Special Development Authority (SDA) Complex in Kasumpti that houses important buildings including several directorates of various State government departments.

A gentleman opened his new Jewelry shop in the Complex. As part of the marketing, a sort of public feast was organized inside Complex premises.

The arrangements including the kitchen were made adjacent to the Software Technology Parks of India (Block No. 24). Except parking, it’s the only open space that is somewhat spacious. The employees at the Complex use it for basking in sun, mostly during morning and lunch.

The feast was successful and by evening all crowd disappeared and catering was also removed.

It’s common feature of public feasts in India to leave places badly littered after it. Mr. jeweler, who is definitely a well to do man, left behind his footprints. Lots of waste was burned at the spot. The plastic packing of refined oil, milk, and spices, remains of salad were packed in a sack that was simply left behind. Disposable plastic water cups were thrown over the railings or dumped at the backyard of the office.

But the sack full of rubbish was the most interesting part. Take a look what happened to it:

First and Second Day

Third and Fourth Day

Fifth and Sixth Day

The litter soon attracted monkeys and stray dogs, which started to empty it searching for food. Now, the rubbish was scattered.

Seventh and Eighth Day

Anyway, no sanitation worker or sweeper appeared after a week. The rubbish remains where it was left by the gentleman.

It proves that no sanitation facility is available even at the SDA Complex. If that’s not all, one should take a round of entire SDA Complex, especially the Software and Technology Park of India (STPI). Surroundings of the premises are badly littered. Heaps of half-burnt, non-biodegradable garbage are clearly visible.

Behind Vehicles Parked in SDA Complex

Empty liquor bottles, disposable, construction waste generated during renovations of offices including large number of broken-glass pieces is lying inside premises for over an year now.

The daily garbage from various offices can be regularly seen burning. Littering and burning are top two methods of waste management in the capital city. Both are dangerous for environment as well as health. Moreover, the administration is ignoring it openly despite a number of complaints filed several times.

The moral of the story is that people don’t have any idea about aesthetics or pollution by littering or other means. People hardly have any desire to keep Shimla, their own home, clean. Every place, other than own house or own building, is equivalent of landfill for pubic and administration. What’s the point of launching campaigns for cleanliness without any efforts to create awareness? How administration hopes to bring change or make people co-operate and develop taste for aesthetics? There is no surprise that Shimla is struggling to make into Smart City project.

Madan has studied English Literature and Journalism from HP University and lives in Shimla. He is an amateur photographer and has been writing on topics ranging from environmental, socio-economic, development programs, education, eco-tourism, eco-friendly lifestyle and to green technologies for over 7 years now. He has an inclination for all things green, wonderful and loves to live in solitude. When not writing, he can be seen wandering, trying to capture world around him in his DSLR lens.

Total 332 Bird Species Located in Himachal Pradesh

Shimla-As per the Great Backyard Bird Count (7th Indian edition), the number of bird species in Himachal Pradesh was 332 in 2018, a spokesman of State Forest Department informed on February 21, 2019.

PCCF (WL) Dr. Savita said
that among the Indian States, Himachal
Pradesh shared the topmost position with
Uttrakhand where the highest number of
species was recorded.

Birding locations included wildlife sanctuaries, national
parks, conservation reserves, villages and urban areas. He said that more than
150 bird species were recorded in Mandi, Shimla, Kangra and Sirmaur districts.

The Great Backyard Bird Count is a citizen science
initiative intended to encourage both amateur and professional bird-watchers to
contribute towards the understanding bird
and their biology in a better way.

The Department said that amateur birders from across the state contributed in the count in addition to 287 checklists that were uploaded into e-Bird by 55 participants.

Participation in the event involved a minimum of 15 minutes bird watching during which all the bird species seen were counted and listed. It involved bird watching sessions with school teachers and students, birding involving local villagers and panchayat representatives and training of frontline staff of the forest department in bird identification.

The Department said a detailed report is in preparation and
will be circulated by the first week of March

Although diesel engines are known to be superior to other
internal combustion engines in terms of lower fuel consumption and better
energy release efficiencies, they are associated with significant amounts of
particulate emissions.

The particulates
largely comprise soot, which is formed in the fuel rich regions of the burning
diesel jets. Increasing environmental concerns and stringent emission standards
require the development of both
conventional and unconventional means for reducing soot.

Studies in this area
have focused on improving the engine design and incorporating special filters
and treatment units at the exhaust end of the vehicle.

Dr. Rahul Vaish,
Associate Professor, School of Engineering at IIT Mandi and his research
students Vishvendra Pratap Singh and Moolchand Sharma have looked at this
problem from a different perspective.

They rationalized that while it is impossible to bring down
soot emissions to zero, it is possible to find a use for the soot produced.

Carbon species such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and candle soot have shown their potential in many fields,

says Dr. Vaish,

so why not automobile soot?

It is known that carbon species can absorb various organic
pollutants in water. Carbon nanotubes, filter paper, mesh films, and graphene
have been used for removing oil from water. Given that the typical carbon
content of soot is between 90 and 98%, the team explored the possibility of
using this pollutant as an adsorbent of oil and organic contaminants in water.

There is a rapid increase in oil and chemical leakages from oil tankers or ships and industrial accidents with expansion in oil production and transportation in the last few decades,

the authors write in their recently published paper, justifying the need for new materials to mop up oil and prevent catastrophic environmental outcomes.

In an earlier study, Dr. Vaish used candle soot to successfully
remove two cationic dyes, rhodamine B and methylene blue from water, thereby
showing the possibility of organic from water thereby showing the possibility
of organic chemical removal by soot. Extending this earlier work, the research
team incorporated diesel exhaust soot into polymer sponges to study their
capability to adsorb oil and other organic
materials from water. This hydrophobic sponge showed high absorption capacity
for various oils, without the need for
complex pretreatments.

The researchers found that the highest oil absorption
capacity was 39 g/g for engine oil. An interesting observation was that the
sponges were recyclable and retained 95% efficiency even after 10 cycles.

The diesel soot impregnated sponge could also absorb
pollutants like methylene blue, ciprofloxacin, and detergent from the water.
This has practical implications.

Apart from oil spills, organic pollutants such as traces of dyes and detergent coming from industries and households are a major contributor to water pollution,

says Dr. Vaish.

The soot impregnated sponge can help in developing
cost-effective remediation processes for common domestic and industrial
pollutants. Such a development would additionally serve to repurpose automobile
waste.

Solan: The government agencies in Himachal Pradesh are quite infamous for disrespecting court orders, especially those relating to environmental protection. This time, we have a case where the local civic body first created an illegal dumping yard on a site selected and cleared for an integrated waste management facility and now covering it with soil and mud after the matter reached the State High Court.

In fact, the government does only what the court orders it to do after activists or the common people file petitions. There is a very clear hypocrisy going on over the Swachh Bharat campaign, which is often used to gain political mileage.

So far, the government has given no sign about being serious when it says, “The government is committed to protect and preserve the environment and ecology of the State.”

The ground-level situation of Solid Waste Management (SWM) in Himachal Pradesh can be best used to demonstrate this hypocrisy by both the current and succeeding governments and the public itself. There is no limit to the callousness of the government agencies at both local as well as the state levels.

If we take up a particular case, then Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh area in Solan district is perhaps in the worst state. The Municipal Council of Baddi and BBN Development Authority (BBNDA) are responsible for the collection and scientific disposal of waste generated in the area. Both agencies had joined hands with a proposal of managing waste disposal in the BBN area.

The MC and BBNDA were supposed to establish a facility where collected waste could be disposed of scientifically. They had obtained the clearance for the same on August 13, 2015, and were allotted 42 bighas and 13 Biswas of land in Kenduwal.

However, as expected, the facility never came into existence. Instead, the MC and BBNDA began dumping MC waste at the selected site and turned it into a big open dumping yard. Within a couple of years, the life of the locals residing very near to this illegally created dumping site became a hell as every day they faced foul smell, flies, mosquitoes.

The nearest house is located merely at a distance of 30 meters while the Sirsa river floodplain is not far at about 100 meters from the dumping site. The locals, supported by an environmental group Himdhara Collective, approached the local civic body and the district administration several times with their grievance. None of the two disappointed the locals and, as usual, didn’t move a muscle.

About 1200 villagers wrote to the President of India after they were disappointed by their own government.

The State Pollution Control Board confined itself to issuing repeated notices to the local bodies to solve the grievance of the locals. While the MC and BBNDA didn’t care about these notices, the HP PCB did not proceed to take proper action.

Very recently, the matter reached the State High Court pleading for justice.

In the interregnum, we direct that no garbage shall be dumped into the land owned by the present petitioner or dumped at any other site, save and except, in accordance with law. We further direct the Senior Environmental Engineer of respondent No.3 to visit the site and after inspecting the same, submit his report with regard to the compliance of the statutory provisions,

a bench of then Acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Ajay Mohan Goyal had said in its order passsed on October 4, 2018.

However, both responsible bodies violated these orders as well and continued to dump garbage at the same site. The villagers captured videos of the same and wrote an application to the Superintendent of Police, Solan. The SP was informed regarding the violations of the court orders.

Letter written by villagers to SP Solan

The Court directed the Senior Environmental Engineer of the HP PCB to file a status report regarding this matter within four weeks

As per the report of the Chief Engineer dated October 15, 2018, the MC, Baddi and BBND hardly collect 30-40 percent of total solid waste generated, which is about 50 tons per day in this case. The collected waste is dumped at Kenduwal while remaining can be found scattered near the BBN area.

HP PCB has repeatedly directed the Municipal Council and BBNDA to dispose of the waste in a scientific manner in accordance with the provision of SWR,

2016, the report submitted to the court said.

The Municipal Solid waste is being collected unsegregated and transported to MSW site at Kenduwal where it is being dumped unscientifically. Most of the time it remains exposed in an open atmosphere and sometimes covered with soil layer, which is a breeding place for flies, mosquitoes, rats etc. The nearest human habitation is a house located at about 30 meters from the boundary of the dumping site, whereas the flood plain of river Sirsa is about 100 meters away from the site,

the report said.

The court concluded that despite having a clearance for the proposed facility to dispose of this waste scientifically, the MC and BBNDA failed to perform their duties.

We have gone through the contents of the report and are satisfied that prima facie, Municipal Council, Baddi, as well as Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh Development Authority (BBNDA), have failed to perform their duties towards collection of solid waste and its dumping in a scientific manner at the MSW disposal site at Kenduwal, for which requisite clearance has been already granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests,

The court also directed the local agencies to take immediate action on the report of the Senior Environmental Engineer.

We direct both the aforesaid Agencies to immediately act upon the report of the Senior Environmental Engineer and submit their respective compliance reports within four weeks. Any delay or defiance will be viewed seriously,

the court directed the MC and BBNDA.

However, the entire waste at the dumping site is being buried under mud and soil.

MC Baddi/BBDNA may be asked to transport the waste as per the past practice of disposing the waste to the Jaypee Plant in Sector 25 of Chandigarh or to Mars Envirotech Ltd. Lalroo (Dera Basssi), Punjab or setting up of ward level compositing/shredding machines till the erection, commissioning and time-bound setting up of Solid Waste Management facility at Kenduwal Baddi, for the cluster of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh area,

the report submitted to the court said.

According to the 2011 Census, the total pollutions of the Baddi MC and BBNDA area were 29911 and 29293 respectively while the total amount of waste generated per day was 25.50 tons and 20.30 tons respectively. The number of migrant labourers or workers from other states was not included in this Census. The populations in both the areas have increased by 2018, which implies growth in a waste generation too. But the responsible government bodies, as well as the district administration, are completely blank when it comes to the chapter on waste management. The Solid Waste Rules, 2016, do exist but only in papers.